History
The Mustang leaves, and comes back with no engine
In 1993 two Special Service Package Mustangs ran their last Michigan test — the only cars in the field without anti-lock brakes. Thirty-three years later the badge returned, and stopped shorter than anything the programme has ever measured.
Nameplates come and go from these tests and most of them go quietly. The Caprice left in 1996 and came back in 2011. The Impala appeared in 2000 and vanished in 2017. None of them made much noise about it.
The Mustang is different, because both ends of its story are visible in the same archive — and because the two entries could hardly be less alike. It arrives in 1982 as a car Michigan tested and then refused to publish. It leaves in 1993 as the last thing in the field without anti-lock brakes. And it returns in 2026 with no engine at all, holding two records that no police car had ever held.
1982: the test Michigan wouldn’t print
The 1982 book contains the most tantalising footnote in the early archive. Agencies had been asking about a smaller “pursuit only” car, and with Ford’s cooperation Michigan ran a twelfth vehicle alongside the eleven that counted — and then declined to publish its numbers.
Whatever the reason, the silence lasted exactly one year.
1983: the numbers arrive
In 1983 the Mustang appears properly, and it is worth reading the figures against the company it was keeping. A 302 H.O. with a four-speed manual, 175 horsepower, 2,970 lb:
| 1983 | 0–60 | 0–100 | Top speed | 60–0, first stop |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ford Mustang 302 H.O. | 8.32 s | 22.71 s | 132.0 mph | 151.3 ft |
| Ford LTD Crown Victoria S 302-CFI | 13.94 s | 69.01 s | 104.4 mph | — |
Sixty-nine seconds to 100 mph for the fuel-injected Crown Victoria, against twenty-two for the Mustang. The next-fastest car in the test was seventeen miles an hour slower on top. And the Mustang’s first braking stop, at 151.3 feet, was the shortest of the entire field — from a car that was not a police package and was not being scored.
Within a model year the Special Service Package Mustang was in service with the California Highway Patrol.
1987–1989: the peak
The Mustang spent the late eighties doing something no police car had done before, which was making the qualification bar look beside the point.
In 1987 Michigan tightened the entry exam substantially — the tightening that ended the Dodge Diplomat’s bid by a quarter of a second — and two Mustangs ran 139 mph straight through it. In 1988 the five-speed car reached 60 mph in 6.90 seconds and crossed the quarter at 91.10 mph, the quickest figures the programme had recorded.
Then 1989 produced the detail that turns up again thirty-seven years later. The two Mustangs ran 137.2 and 138.0 mph, and for the first time the automatic out-lapped the five-speed — 1:21.56 against 1:22.51, the quickest laps the programme had ever seen. A transmission, rather than an engine, made the difference.
1993: the last one
By 1993 the Mustang was still fast and no longer enough. Michigan tested the last Special Service Package cars beside the first LT1 Camaros, and printed the retirement in a single table.
| 1993 | 0–60 | 0–100 | Top speed | Lap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chevrolet Camaro 5.7 (automatic) | 6.18 s | 15.82 s | 154.0 mph | 79.52 s |
| Ford Mustang 5.0 (5-speed) | 6.59 s | 18.45 s | 137.0 mph | 82.28 s |
| Ford Mustang 5.0 (automatic) | 7.98 s | 22.34 s | 135.1 mph | 83.39 s |
Seventeen miles an hour and nearly three seconds a lap. The Camaro was quicker at every measured speed. And there is one more line in that book, recorded almost in passing: the two Mustangs were the only vehicles in the entire field without anti-lock brakes.
The car that had made every police sedan look slow in 1983 left the programme a decade later as the last thing in the field still stopping the old way.
Three years afterwards, in 1996, Ford submitted a Crown Victoria without anti-lock brakes purely so Michigan could measure what the system was worth. The answer was sixteen feet. By then the Mustang was gone, and the argument it had been on the wrong side of was over.
2026: the badge comes back
There is no Mustang in a Michigan test for thirty-three years. Then the 2026 evaluation lists a Ford Mustang Mach-E GT: all-wheel drive, battery electric, no engine of any kind.
It is easy to be sniffy about that, and the numbers make it difficult.
| Ford Mustang Mach-E GT eAWD | Figure | Standing in the archive |
|---|---|---|
| 0–60 mph | 4.03 s | quickest car ever tested |
| 0–100 mph | 10.63 s | quickest car ever tested |
| 60–0 braking | 122.45 ft | shortest stop ever recorded by a car |
| Top speed | 124 mph | mid-field |
| Communications | 5.33 / 10 | last of thirteen |
Only motorcycles have gone quicker to 60 mph in the history of these tests. The 122.45-foot stop beats the 2017 Dodge Charger and the 2012 Caprice, and it is printed in the book rather than derived — Michigan measured it directly.
The two Mustangs, side by side
| 1993 Mustang SSP | 2026 Mustang Mach-E GT | |
|---|---|---|
| Drive | rear | all-wheel |
| Power | 5.0-litre V8 | battery electric |
| 0–60 mph | 6.59 s | 4.03 s |
| 0–100 mph | 18.45 s | 10.63 s |
| Top speed | 137.0 mph | 124 mph |
| Anti-lock brakes | none | standard |
The old car is faster at the top end and nowhere else. Thirty-three years took two and a half seconds out of the run to 60 and nearly eight out of the run to 100 — and put anti-lock brakes on it, which is the difference that would actually matter on a Tuesday afternoon.
What hasn’t changed
Here is the part that makes this more than a novelty. In 1993 the Mustang was the fastest thing Ford brought and a poor place to work — its ergonomics total of 170.33 was the lowest in that test, against 230.87 for the Caprice.
In 2026 the Mach-E is the quickest and best-braking vehicle in the entire field, and it finishes thirteenth of thirteen on communications, at 5.33 out of ten. The people who have to fit a radio, a cage, a computer and a light bar into it liked it least of everything on the page.
Thirty-three years, a completely different drivetrain, and the same verdict: fastest thing here, nowhere to put anything.
That is the joke the archive has been building towards, and it is not really a joke. Michigan weights ergonomics and communications at ten points out of a hundred precisely because a police car is a workplace before it is a performance car. The Mustang has now failed that test twice, in two centuries of automotive engineering, from opposite directions.
It also tells you something about what the programme is for. A test that only measured acceleration would have called the 1993 Mustang a success and the 2026 Mach-E a triumph. Michigan’s own tables say something more useful: both of them are the quickest thing in the room, and neither of them is the vehicle you would actually buy four hundred of.